


you know that i won't let you fall

by milominderbinder



Series: maia's shameless fic a day in the month of may [19]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Broken Bones, Fluff, Hospitals, M/M, Worried boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-26 06:04:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1677485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milominderbinder/pseuds/milominderbinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey comes home to a note on the fridge that makes the floor drop out from under him.</p><p>  <i>Ian in hospital, come asap.</i></p><p>Luckily, it takes more than a broken arm to keep a Gallagher down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you know that i won't let you fall

When Mickey finishes up work at the Alibi, he heads home, but finds the Gallagher house empty.

It’s strange.  He’s been living there for months now, and he’s never seen the place without at least _one_ noisy brat lounging about.  He doesn’t know what’s going on, until he heads to the fridge to crack open a beer, and sees a note stuck there, scribbled on the back of an old bill in Fiona’s messy handwriting and suspended by one of Liam's letter-magnets.

_Ian in hospital, come asap._

The floor drops out from under him, and for a second, all Mickey sees in darkness.

\--

Nobody’s answering their phone.  Mickey runs to the el, but he has to stop to throw up in a hedge.

If something’s happened to Ian -

Mickey doesn’t think, just hops the turnstiles and gets on the first train he sees.

\--

The train’s noisy.  There are seats free, but he doesn’t sit down, stands right in front of the doors, ready to get off the second it reaches the hospital stop.  

His nails are digging into his palms so hard they draw blood.

\--

When he gets into the hospital, he flings himself against the front desk, out of breath from running all the way from the station.  The nurse behind the desk raises her perfectly-plucked eyebrows, gives him a look of disdain, but he couldn’t care less.

“Ian Gallagher,” he says, voice low.  “What room is Ian Gallagher in?”

The nurse eyes him for a moment longer before directing her gaze down at the computer screen.  Mickey drums his fingers on the desk to keep from punching something.  One second, two seconds, three seconds, she’s taking _too fucking long._

He’s about to start threatening her loved ones when he hears the voice behind him.

“Mickey!  Over here!”

He spins.  It’s Carl, stood over by the vending machines, waving.

Mickey abandons the nurse without a word, and races towards Carl.

“How is he?” he asks.  “What happened?  Is he - is he okay?  Where is everyone?”

“They’re all in the waiting room down the hall,” Carl tells him.  He’s feeding quarters into the vending machine, which strangely reassures Mickey; he knows Ian is Carl’s favourite sibling, if anything _too_ awful had happened he probably wouldn’t be focusing on Klondike bars and Gatorade.  “He’s probably gonna be fine, but he’s in surgery or whatever.  He was trying to fix a tile and he fell off the roof, think his arm’s broken.” 

Mickey can’t decide if he feels better or worse.   _Probably_ makes him feel worse, _gonna be fine_ makes him feel better.   _Fell off the roof_ makes him feel a lot fuckin’ worse, but _arm’s broken_ makes him better again, because that’s not too bad, Mickey’s broken plenty of bones, and Ian has, before, too.  But - _surgery._ That’s the outlier.  That’s bad, with nothing to balance it out.

“What waiting room?” he asks.

\--

In the ER waiting room, Liam is asleep on Debbie’s lap, Lip is reading a math textbook bigger than his head in the corner, and Fiona is pacing, chewing on her thumbnail and fiddling with her hair.  Carl drops into the seat next to Debbie and hands her one of the candy bars he’d gotten from the vending machine.  Then, everyone looks at Mickey.

“How is he?” he asks.  His voice cracks, and he knows that he sounds fucking _wrecked,_ but he doesn’t really care.  He _is,_ after all.

“We don’t know,” Fiona responds.  She sounds almost as worried at Mickey, but it’s covered in a layer of faux cheeriness; he watches as she shoots a look at Debbie and Carl, then pushes a smile onto her face.  “But I’m sure he’ll be fine!  He was still awake when they wheeled him into surgery, and he seemed okay.  Hey, we’ve all broken bones, right?”

“If it’s just a broken bone then why the fuck is he in surgery?”

Fiona shoots another look at the kids, who don’t seem to be paying much attention to the conversation but are still within earshot.  Then she grabs Mickey by the shoulder and drags him across the room.

“Look, he _will_ be fine,” she says, voice low, leaning in close to him.  “But the doc said it was a pretty rough break.  Right on the shoulder joint.  They’ve got to put some pins in, and he’ll probably have to have a couple months of physical therapy.”

Mickey closes his eyes, takes a deep breath.  He can feel Fiona staring at him,

“Okay,” he says.  “Okay.  That’s - that doesn’t sound too bad.  He’s good with shit like this, he’ll be better in no time, right?”

“Yeah,” she agrees, squeezing Mickey’s shoulder.  “He will.  You know Ian, he’ll probably cut the recovery time in half just by force of will.”

Mickey smiles a little at that.

“So, hey, you got insurance at your new job?” he asks, a second later.  She turns her gaze to the floor again, bites her lip, shakes her head.

“I have no idea how we’re gonna pay these bills,” she mutters.  “I’m barely keeping my head above water with food and electric, let alone all _this._ It’s gonna be pricey as shit.”

Mickey nods, slowly.  That’s what he’d figured.

“Don’t worry about it,” he tells her.  “I’ll figure something out.”

\--

While they wait, Mickey drinks five cardboard cups of watery tea.  He doesn't even like tea, but he needs something to do with his hands.  Every moment that passes without news is another year, in his mind.  He paces around the room, never sitting down; occasionally, his pacing overlaps with Fiona's, and they share a reassuring glance.

His lip is bleeding, but he can't remember why.

\--

It’s an hour later that a short chick with an afro and a pair of scrubs on walks into the waiting room, and calls out, “Gallagher?”

Fiona immediately leaps up, Mickey only one step behind her.

“That’s us,” Fiona says.  The doctor walks towards them.  Her face is calm - not smiling, but somehow looking happy anyway, and it manages to make Mickey feel a little better.

“The surgery went well,” the doctor says.  Mickey feels, for the first time since he’d seen the note on the fridge that afternoon, that he’s standing on something close to solid ground.  “We’ve had to put three temporary pins in his shoulder, so he will need a second surgery at some point to take those out again.  And he has a few long months of physical therapy ahead if he wants to keep full motion in the joint.  But I’m highly optimistic that he will make a full recovery.”

“Can we see him?” Fiona asks.  The kids are all crowding around her, Lip too, but she grabs at Mickey’s hand instead of any of theirs, squeezes it tight.  He don’t fight it, just squeezes back.

The doctor glances around at them all.

“He is awake,” she says.  “But he’s drowsy and still recovering.  If one or two of you wanted to see him, that would be fine, but the rest of you will have to wait.”

“Me and Mickey will go in,” Fiona says.

She doesn’t even think about it.  It’s a knee jerk reaction, she doesn’t even pause for a second.  Doesn’t glance at Lip over her shoulder, the guy who’d been Ian’s best friend nearly his whole life, or Debbie, who’s been crying with worry, or Carl, who looks up to Ian more than anyone else in the world.  She just says Mickey.  Straight away.

He’s not protesting, but he does squeeze her hand a little harder.  A thank you, in a way he doesn’t totally understand.

“Okay,” says the doctor.  It’s not a big deal to _her._ “This way.”

\--

Ian’s wearing a blue hospital gown, and has his arm in a complicated looking sling.  He also has the dopiest grin Mickey’s ever seen on his face.

“How high _are_ you?” Mickey asks, when they walk in.  Fiona shoots him a _look,_ like she thinks that was the stupidest thing he possibly could’ve said, but Ian giggles.

“ _So high_ ,” he responds.  “Mick, you gotta break your arm, I’m tellin’ you, best drugs _ever.”_

Mickey grins, laughs a little, but after a moment his laughs turn to something more like sobs and he forces himself to stop.  Fuck.  This whole fucking afternoon has been so intense, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

He’s still standing in the doorway, just staring, but Fiona’s already moved to Ian’s bedside.  She’s holding his hand on his good side, talking to him in a quiet voice about nothing much, asking how he feels and if he wants strawberry or chocolate ice cream when he gets out.  Mickey watches them together for a long moment before it becomes too much, before he _needs_ to be touching Ian.

He crosses the room in three quick strides and leans over the bed, so so careful not to touch Ian’s arm.

“You’re okay?” he checks.  Fiona stops talking - doesn’t seem to mind, even though he’d cut her off in the middle of a sentence.

“I’m fine,” Ian says, grinning his dopey grin and reaching his good hand up to lazily bat at Mickey’s hair.  “An’ I want _coffee_ ice cream.”

Fiona laughs.

“You got it,” she says.  She won’t let go of Ian’s hand, won’t leave, and Mickey doesn’t want to ask her to.  He’s never kissed Ian in front of his family before.  But in that moment, it matters less than pretty much everything else in the universe.

He kisses Ian softly, for way too long, and doesn’t think about how fucking _lucky_ they were that it was just a broken arm.

**Author's Note:**

> for the fic a day in may challenge, and pawabowa, who prompted _ian in hospital_
> 
> my grandma fell over on the ice just before last christmas and she broke her arm/shoulder and had to have _eleven_ mickeymilk


End file.
